A Comparative Study Of Questioning Strategies Between Novice Teacher And Experienced Teacher In Junior High School Classrooms

Questioning strategies play an important role in English teaching. Effective questioning strategies can enhance students’ participation, provoke cognitive process of students, help teachers achieve the teaching objectives and improve teaching qualities. However, Teachers, even experienced English teachers are often troubled with problems in designing questions before class or questioning strategies in class. Novice English teachers have more problems about questioning strategies than experienced English teachers. The present study focuses on effective experienced English teachers and novice English teachers in question designing before class and questioning in class. Comparing the differences and similarities of questioning strategies between novice English teachers and experienced English teachers, it is helpful to teachers’ questioning abilities based on the research findings.Ten English teachers from a junior high school, Yongji City, Shanxi Province were interviewed and four teachers were chosen from them whose classes were observed on the site. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis, the results show that in respect of question designing, significant differences exist between novice English teachers and experienced English teachers and novice English teachers tended to design questions before class; in respect of questioning types, novice English teachers raised questions’ level lower than proficient English teachers and novice English teachers raised much lower-level questions, memory tasks mostly. As for novice English teachers and proficient English teachers, their methods of asking questions are not various and reasonable on the whole. Proficient English teachers gave students more wait-time to answer questions; proficient teachers are more mature and detailed in respect of feedbacks to students and the evaluation they made are more targeted. In accordance with the findings, the author give some advices and suggestions on effective questioning strategies.